


Death Upon the Vine

by InTheGreySpaces



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Angst, It’s John’s fault, M/M, the first break in trust
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-26
Updated: 2019-08-26
Packaged: 2020-09-26 23:00:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20397562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InTheGreySpaces/pseuds/InTheGreySpaces
Summary: John started the cycle.





	Death Upon the Vine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Linden](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Linden/gifts), [Lochinvar](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lochinvar/gifts).

> This piece was inspired by a comment Jensen made during a convention about how only in the fan fiction world did Dean and Sam love, trust, and rely on each other; because in actuality they lied to and hurt each other all the time. I got to thinking about why the fanfic world always writes them this way and went all the way back to the start of season 2, episode 1 "In My Time of Dying" when it was actually John who first broke their trust in each other by telling Dean he'd have to save Sam or kill him, and that wasn't anything Dean could share until Sam forced his hand later.
> 
> Also inspired by 'Black Sun' by Death Cab for Cutie because I was listening to it when thinking these deep thoughts.

The trust was broken.

Dean could feel it down inside his bones like the first cells of cancer starting to multiply, quiet and unseen, until it had spread too far to do anything about; too far to to treat, much less to cure. 

John—because it hurt too much to call him 'Dad' now, that seat in his heart sat empty all of a sudden, abandoned in this break and leaving a gaping wound to line up beside all the others—had broken it by putting his brother's life in his hands.

And that was nothing new. John had put Sam's life into Dean's hands at the tender age of four, and it had been there ever since; but it had never been his _choice_. Dean had lived to protect Sam from anything that could hurt him. He had never suspected one day he would be protecting him from himself. Now, John was giving him the _choice_, telling him _he_ had to make the decision whether or not his brother could be saved, or if he should cut the world's losses and kill him. 

His brother. His Sammy. 

His Sammy whose silken, unruly locks he had just gotten back between his fingers; whose long, hard body he was finally pressing flesh with again at night. And that was new, because Dean had spent his entire life wrapped around Sam, but the kid had put on another three inches at college and now it was so much easier somehow to roll over and fit himself into the warm hollow of Sam's chest and belly and let those ridiculously long limbs wrap around him until he could barley breathe from the weight and heat. It felt safe and like home and Dean knew he'd happily die of heatstroke crushed in his brother's arms.

It had only taken that Wendigo trying to put Dean up for the long nap for them to tumble back into each other like moons drawn by the same irresistible gravitational force to a critical mass of emotion a lifetime wide and four years steeped in separation and angry longing.

Now, he was left wobbling on his axis, trying to understand the fairness of the ache in John's eyes when he had just unburdened himself and laid this weight on his son's shoulders. Shoulders that had held up under everything John had put on him so far, the responsibility, the loneliness, the pain—sharp from claws and gunshots and the duller, longer lasting kind that hinted at the wreckage his body would be a decade from now if he kept down this road. He'd shouldered it all without complaint, never a question, never a doubt.

And now this.

**Author's Note:**

> To my lovely Linden and Lochinvar, just a little something I found lurking in the piles that made me go, "I wrote that...?"


End file.
